After its absolute “standstill” in 2020 and a sluggish 2021, experts predict that tourism in the meetings, incentives, congresses and exhibitions sector will be back on track in 2022, according to a presentation yesterday at the Ibiza MICE Summit, the first symposium of its kind to be held on the island. Teresa Broccoli, president of MPI Iberian Chapter, who participated in the round table ‘The future of face-to-face events in the main markets’, is confident that this will be the case: “In the second half of 2022 and 2023 we will already have the turnover levels we had in 2019,” she says.
This executive recalled the “total standstill” that the sector suffered with the pandemic: “The first step we took when we came out of confinement was to address the domestic market. We started slowly, with small meetings with employees and national clients”. This domestic market “is almost recovered” for the congress sector, “although there is still some fear”. On the other hand, there is the international market: “That’s why this Ibiza MICE Summit and similar events are very important. Today there are people here from the UK and Germany who have come to see what is happening in other countries. We want to know when the international events, which represent the great weight of our industry, will arrive. It is a type of tourism that consumes much more than the holiday tourist, a business worth millions that we have to try to recover”.
Rosana Morillo, Director General of Tourism of the Government, presented a revealing fact in this regard: “This segment has a great economic impact: its expenditure is 30% higher than that of leisure tourists. In addition, “it provides deseasonalization, creates a wide range of jobs” and helps to “consolidate a model of quality and sustainable tourism”.
The sector will return next year to the turnover of 2019, although in a different way than then: “We will move in the closest markets, such as France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom and Baltic countries, which were previously the most important for Spain. But the United States, Canada and Latin America, which were very important markets, especially the latter, will take a little longer” to become active for this destination.
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